COP30 - Between symbolism and operational challenge - what is at stake? OPINION November 6, 2025
- Ana Cunha-Busch
- Nov 5, 2025
- 3 min read
COP30 - Between symbolism and operational challenge - what is at stake?
By Claudia Andrade
COP30 will be held in Belém, in the heart of the Amazon, and never has a climate conference carried so much symbolism — and so much responsibility. It is impossible not to feel the weight of this choice. The world is watching us. Brazil. The forest. What we will do — or fail to do — when the stage is ours.
There is something beautiful and, at the same time, dangerous in this expectation. Beautiful because the planet recognizes the essential role of the Amazon in global climate stability. Dangerous because the risk of rhetoric is high: transforming the forest into a stage set, without the decisions reflecting the reality of those who live in it. It's like applauding a show without noticing that the stage floor is collapsing.
In recent conferences, we have seen slow progress, recycled promises, and commitments that sound good in headlines but stumble in practice. COP30, therefore, arrives with a dual mission: to recover the credibility of the international process and to prove that the ecological transition can indeed be just, viable, and real. And this needs to start in Belém—not in Geneva, nor in New York.
Brazil has the potential to lead this new cycle. We have biodiversity, a clean energy matrix, a vocation for nature-based solutions, and one of the richest territories on the planet. But leadership, in today's world, is not measured by speeches, but by consistency. That is what the world will measure: whether the country hosting the Amazon COP is truly willing to be the guardian of the forest—or whether it will continue to reconcile destruction and progress, as if they were compatible sides of the same coin.
Companies expect predictability. Governments, prestige. Activists, justice. Local communities, dignity, and investment. It is fair to expect all of this. But it is illusory to think that the COP, by itself, will solve what we have not solved in decades. What it can — and should — do is unlock what is blocked: the climate financing that never arrives, the carbon credit mechanisms that still don't work, the real inclusion of indigenous and traditional peoples in decision-making. Without this, the event risks becoming just another diplomatic rite of passage, with beautiful words and little legacy.
There is also the issue of internal coherence. How to reconcile a conference on the future of the climate while still discussing oil exploration on the equatorial margin? How to ask the world to trust Brazilian leadership if our own environmental policies are still facing setbacks, cuts, and disputes? COP30 is, more than anything, a mirror — and the reflection can be uncomfortable.
I believe that Belém can be a turning point. Not because of the grandeur of the event, but because of the chance to reposition the climate debate where it needs to be: in the territory, in the communities, in everyday decisions. It's possible that this COP will be the first where the world truly listens to those who experience the impact of climate change firsthand—the riverside communities, the women carrying buckets of water, the farmers who feel the soil shifting. If that happens, it will already be a civilizational advance.
Even so, vigilance is necessary. Large conferences have a knack for turning causes into slogans. And the challenge of COP30 is precisely the opposite: to transform slogans into real causes. The legacy will not come from the speeches of heads of state, but from what is able to take root in people's lives after the cameras are turned off.
The world doesn't need another inspiring COP. It needs one that is consequential. And Brazil, which was chosen as host, needs to decide whether it wants to be a stage or a protagonist.
COP30 could be the beginning of a new era or just the end of another promise. And perhaps the most honest question we should ask is this: when everyone leaves Bethlehem, what—or who—will remain standing?
#SDGs: 13, 15, 6, 9, 11, 10, and 17
@cauvic2
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